Team Nessassity News - December Monthly Mod Report Episode 5 - Wait, Actually-

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Okay, so, this is NOT the final Monthly Mod Report! Many things have happened over the past couple of weeks, and... as you may have realised by now, the ambitious plan of releasing the Lhùren rework by the 31st of December kiiiiiinda flew off the rails, but it's okay! It's totally okay, I know it's already the 50th and the promise that it would be out by the end of the year is starting to cut it a little close, but don't worry, it's still happening!

✧ Elves of Stellaris

If you're wondering what's taking so long, the short and sweet answer is, there's 3 major things that... ended up taking a little longer than Princess, well-known for her accurate estimates, had anticipated >.>

• I spent a large chunk of the past 3 weeks wrestling with the big main story line of the Celestial Throne Origin. Although I had laid down some groundwork for it at the beginning, drafting up the whole script and planning out its progression, when it actually came down to turning it into a cohesive narrative that remained cohesive after being broken up into the many quest stages, two excavation sites and three ending routes, my progress slowed down to a crawl. BUT! The good news is, it's all finished now!

• The second delaying factor ended up being the shield models. Midway through production, we decided that the shield we were using looked a little boring, so we started working on a new one from scratch...
  It's so pretty >.< But the three versions of it that we need are taking a bit of extra time in the oven. It will be worth it tho, because you know how amazing Nessa's finished work is! Oh, and did I mention that it's all shiny and animated? Because it is, it's SO SHINY @o@
  

• And the third reason is... I may have come up with a solution to the Civic rework problem that I outlined in one of the earlier episodes of this MMR! And... instead of tacking it post-release like I said I would, I'm feeling the urge to do it right now, while the idea is still fresh in my mind. Let's go over it briefly!

Lhùren Civic Re-Rework

So, this new idea was kinda born from attempting to salvage some world-building fluff that I didn't get to use in the main story (combined, the event chain is already ~4700 words long, so things that weren't essential to story progression had to be edited down a bit >.<).
It had to do with how four colours - azure, jade, crimson and yellow - represented the four pillars of Lhùren culture and how they were reflected in their fashion and customs across societal strata. Yeah... remember what I said about laying down the groundwork? In the end, this lore was subtly referenced in the story, but I couldn't find a good diegetic way to include the actual explanation behind the colour associations (it's ultimately not very relevant to the story's primary themes).

Until... today! So it suddenly occurred to me that the Celestial Grace civic would make for a much better home for that kind of fluff. And then I realised that I didn't even need to explain it through events! It could be incorporated directly into the Celestial Favor mechanics!

And that is how I arrived at the new (and admittedly a very work-in-progressy) concept for the Civic rework. Remember how I mentioned that the previous (now discarded) idea for the rework was based on the Dark Elf Loyalty system from Total War Warhammer? Well, this one ended up being similar to a different mechanic from the same game, specifically Cathay's Wu Xing Compass. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, picture a compass with 4 directions, and a needle that you can rotate to point in whatever direction you desire. The longer the needle points in one direction, the more its associated buff grows, while the other 3 decline slowly.

In Stellaris... I'm not going to implement a whole UI widget for that, but the same effect can be achieved with a single set of Policies, in which there are 4 options, and you can choose to focus on one.
Under this system, instead of representing the Celestial Throne's Mandate of Heaven, Celestial Favor will be a measure of how much the Emperor/Empress favours each of the 4 aforementioned pillars (and the abstract court factions with vested interests therein).

And those are, as follows:

• Azure Waters (encompassing the material world and the common people; bonuses most likely focused on worker happiness, trade and pop growth)

• Jade Pavilion (associated with intellectual and spiritual cultivation; bonuses most likely focused on specialist happiness, research and unity)

• Crimson Firmament (related to order, law and administration; bonuses most likely focused on ruler happiness, council efficiency and crime/stability)

• Yellow Lantern (related to the imperial authority and divine communion; bonuses most likely focused on subject loyalty/strength, edicts and influence)

You'll be able to either leave them alone, which will over time balance them out at a middling score that offers weak benefits across the board, OR choose to focus on one, which will super-charge its bonuses while slowly reducing the other 3's scores.
Letting an aspect reach 0 will confer some mild debuffs, but I don't think there will be any devastating penalties. Ultimately, I want this system to offer more carrots than sticks, and not be something you have to excessively micromanage. Instead, it should work as an adaptive tool that you can use to support whatever your agenda happens to be at the time.

Anyways! Hopefully this explains what I have in mind. I'll be working on implementing this new system over the next couple of days (being actually very basic behind the scenes, it won't take too much work) and if I like the results, you should be seeing it in the upcoming Elves of Stellaris update! Very soon! (for realsies! >.<)

Until then... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!